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Back when I was gathering a list for my son of things we “needed” for his arrival I came across the Graco Sweetpeace. I instantly fell in love, it had all the options I was looking for, there were different sounds, songs, and classical songs as well as an mp3 jack to hook up your ipod to play your personal choice of music. It had a toy bar, the seat could be moved facing in, out to the left or the right, it could also come out and be placed on the floor as a rocker. The swing was everything I wanted, and after talking to a few of my friends who had used this swing I knew it would be the best choice for us.

I received this swing as a gift from my Aunt for my baby shower! I was shocked because first off I never expected someone to buy such an expensive piece of equipment for someone else. I fully intended on buying it ourselves. This unit retails around $179.99 now, I think it was about that price, maybe more when we received it.

Installation:

I put this swing together when I was about 8 months pregnant with the help of my sister. It was not difficult to put together at all, the base locks into place at 2 points and then the motor sets into the base at the bottom of it. Then the base for the chair of the swing gets inserted into the motor and you place the chair into it in any direction you please. It should click into place. Pretty simple, pretty easy to do, I didn’t really need help with it, but when you’re 8 months pregnant you’ll take the help you can get especially because you get tired quickly.
You have 2 options to turn it on you can either use batteries, I think 4-6 D’s or C’s OR you can use the A/C adapter that it comes with.

Size and Sound of Motor:

One note this unit is fairly large and sticks out, but if you’re ok with that it is an excellent swing.
When I first turned the swing on, before I had my son, I was concerned with the sound the motor made, which as I researched was a common problem with this unit. Some having a light humming to a loud cranking. Mine wasn’t too bad, but I’m a light sleeper and so I figured it could become an issue once our son was born. I called up Graco and they told me that it needed a minimum of 5 lbs to work properly. I put a bag of flour into it while on the phone with the rep to see if it changed/fixed the problem. It made it a little less noticeable but it was still something I was concerned with. They said they would ship me a replacement motor tower. When I received the newer motor I was very pleased, it wasn’t as noticeable as the other one. Now please realize that this swing’s motor will make a small noise/sound when it is in motion, but it shouldn’t be too loud. After that I was pleased!

Features:

The seat can be turned in any direction you choose, facing in, out, left or right to allow side swinging or front to back swinging. You can also put a compatible Graco car seat into this swing when you remove the seat. Definitely a feature I enjoyed using because when we would go anywhere in the early days our son would fall asleep in the car and we’d make it nap time when we got home. Once he stopped having motion he would wake up so the swing came in great handy! The seat also can be removed and used on the floor as a rocker. The seat also reclines, though I’ve read reviews by others that it doesn’t recline enough for a newborn, but it did not seem to matter to my son. It comes with an infant insert for their head, as well as a seat belt that you can uses on their lap and shoulders or just their lap depending on how you feel. The seat also can have batteries added to allow you to have the seat vibrate, we never needed to use it to I have no opinion on it’s function. The seat also has a canopy, which I used occasionally but not too often, we just didn’t need to. Your use for it may differ.

Music: this unit has tons of music and sounds. The first set of music on the unit is more of the nursery rhyme type songs in instrumental form. Songs like “She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain” and “This is the Way We..” the second music button provides you with the more Classical choices such as Beethoven and Clair de Lune. The sounds button provides you with quite a few different options, the womb sounds with mom’s heartbeat, rainforest with chirping birds during a thunderstorm, underwater sound, dripping water, and the like. The 4th option is for your MP3 player to be connected, there is also a drawer in the back of the unit to safely store your MP3 player while it’s in use. We are no longer using the swing part of the until but we are still using it as a sound machine. When we first brought our son home we played the womb sound thinking that it’d be more of a comfort for him. As he got older he seemed to become bored with that sound so we changed it to the thunderstorm because he recently had shown interest in birds. To this day we are still using the thunderstorm sound when he naps or goes to sleep, though I’m not entirely sure if he really needs it, it does drown out the other noises of the house and outside noises as well.

Swing: This unit has 6 swinging modes, for the first few months I never went faster than number 3, as he continued to get older I allowed him to try other speeds, but he seemed to prefer the slower speeds. Once he started getting heavier though, the higher speeds were needed to push him but it still appeared to be like one of the slower speeds. Though when he was a newborn speed 6 was just way too fast, so you might not want to use speeds 4-6 until they are about 6 months old.

Toy Bar: I found the toy bar to not really hold his interest too much. In the safari style, which is what we have, it has a giraffe with little rings around it’s neck, and a mirror that moves up and down with a spinning piece in the middle with little beads to make noise. It just didn’t do too much to hold his interest. He played with the mirror and the giraffe every now and then, but for the most part it stayed off, however for a while I kind of used it as an added seat belt, on top of the other belts. It locks into place, and is easily removed.

Over all I would recommend this unit to others, while expensive I think the features make up for it. I feel like this offered all of the styles I wanted for our son, because I was concerned with whether or not he would be ok with just swinging to the side or front to back as other swings only give you one option. News swings are coming out that allow you to have several different options, but I still think I’d pick this one over the others. Since we’re still using it as a sound machine and our son is 18 months old I’d say it’s definitely getting it’s monies worth. Not to mention our son loves to push the buttons and turn on the music he likes when we’re in the bedroom.